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Shaun
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The CIA of the Bronze Age
The world's first documented intelligence agency had field agents, regional stations, an analyst-in-chief, and one very demanding customer. The customer was the king of Assyria.
The clay letters survive. Spies and informants along the Urartian frontier reported to collection officers like Gabbu-ana-Aššur, the Palace Herald, who bundled their reports. Everything flowed to the analyst running the whole service, and his identity is the astonishing part. Crown prince Sennacherib, heir to the empire, was his father's intelligence director.
His letters to King Sargon II even show source corroboration. One report quotes three separate agents on the same battle, two confirming the enemy army's destruction, a third adding that the enemy commander-in-chief had been captured.
2,700 years before the CIA, the tradecraft was already on file. In cuneiform.

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